Friday, former Massachusetts chemist Annie Dookhan pleaded guilty to all 27 counts of falsifying nearly 40,000 criminal drug cases, effectively upending the Massachusetts criminal justice system. Dookhan admitted to filing false test results, mixing drug samples together, and lying under oath about her job qualifications. She claimed that she committed her crimes to boost her job performance and was sentenced on Friday to three to five years in prison, plus probation.

Though many of the stories reporting Dookhans conviction focus on her alone, problems extend beyond one ambitious chemist. Dookhans dry labbing is just one part of a structure that incentivizes people working in the criminal justice system to get convictionsnot truthand put as many people in prison as possible without regard to their actual guilt.

In Massachusetts, Attorney General Martha Coakley, who heads the office prosecuting Dookhans case, said that Dookhans conviction was only one part of a greater investigation into the entire Hinton drug lab where Dookhan worked. According to the Boston Globe, state police also fired a drug analyst from the same lab for allegedly falsely claiming in court that she possessed a Bachelors in chemistry.

The corruption does not seem to have stayed within the lab. When Dookhan was convicted, her emails revealed close ties to prosecutors in the state, including Norfolk Assistant ­District Attorney George ­Papachristos, who resigned when the emails were released revealing a flirtatious friendship. Dookhan regularly performed favors for prosecutors, even asking them if she should respond to defense attorneys requests for information. One email chain suggests that prosecutors in touch with Dookhan knew they were getting falsified results but pressed forward anyway.

As egregious as the problems appear to be in Massachusetts, the state is not at all an isolated incident of prosecutorial corruption. In Texas, for example, a prosecutor recently achieved a rare thing: He was recently sentenced to jail for knowingly convicting an innocent man.

Research shows that the problem reaches far beyond a few states. According to a study published last year in Criminal Justice Ethics, the American system by and large perverts the incentives of the people working in it, such that everyone, from police, to prosecutors, and, apparently, even the lab scientists, are more motivated to get a guilty verdict rather than to ascertain real guilt or innocence.

Forensics labs, the study says, are funded, in part, per conviction. Not per correct rulings, but per conviction. For example, as of 2012, North Carolina paid $600 for the services of the crime lab per conviction. At least 13 other states have similar schemes in place.

Being paid by the state to get convictions isnt the only way the design breeds corruption. According to a 2010 report, many state laws are actually written in such a way that law enforcement can directly profit off of property seized by those even suspected of committing a crime. Much of the time, this crime is simple drug possession. Only eight states have laws that bar the use of forfeiture proceeds for the benefit of the department. According to the report, In the other 42 states, at least 50 percent goes to law enforcement, and in 26 states, it is 100 percent. Massachusetts is one of those states that receives 100%.

Perhaps some of that can be put to good use since the rightful owners will never see it again: The state has already spent $8.5 million cleaning up Dookhans mess with another $8.6 million to be used in the current fiscal year.

Given that Massachusetts rewards its police for seizing property and that state crime labs are funded per conviction, is it really such a wonder that Annie Dookhan did what she could to ensure that her lab got as many convictions as possible?

When Dookhan pleaded guilty, Attorney General Martha Coakley said, Certainly one of the victims in this case, and the actions of Annie Dookhan, is the public trust. Indeed, the publics trust has been broken, but not by Dookhan herself. Rather, it has been soiled by the criminal justice system that aligns everything in such a way that the most rational thing for Dookhan to do her own self interest was to put innocent people behind bars.

What we have here is not a case of one woman attempting to meet her own wild ambitions. What Americans have is a system that is designed, whether intentionally or not, to get as many people thrown in jail as possible. It is a system that is broken, and it is a system that desperately needs to be revisited. And its not just Massachusetts problem.

This chic needs to spend the rest of her life in jail and doing “jobs” that would go to pay for all the new trials that will come of this. Sje must be an obama supporter/voter to have gotten off so lightly.

2
posted on 12/09/2013 4:43:25 AM PST
by freeangel
( (free speech is only good until someone else doesn't like it)

“Forensics labs, the study says, are funded, in part, per conviction...”

I worked for many years as a forensic chemist....and that’s nuts!! In fact, the lab where I worked would have considered that arangement to be unethical. I know because I once accepted a job along similar lines and the staff had a debate about it. I was instructed in no uncertain terms that payment must never depend on results.

I’ve often said that I would never want to testify as an “expert witness” in any court proceeding, because I know going in that one side is lying to win their case. There is no way I will lie and use my standing as an expert to support the lie.

What Dookhan did is far worse than simply telling the story that the defense or prosecuting attorneys want told.

6
posted on 12/09/2013 4:55:18 AM PST
by exDemMom
(Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)

> Ive often said that I would never want to testify as an expert witness in any court proceeding, because I know going in that one side is lying to win their case. There is no way I will lie and use my standing as an expert to support the lie.

Anyone that’s an expert knows there’s no such thing as an “expert” just someone who’s been at it a long time. Being called an expert implies that they are infallible which they are not.

Don't worry. At least in many jurisdictions, if you're actually expert at something, it's unlikely that you'll be called as an “expert witness.”

I'm aware of a case where the question is over the valuation of the intellectual property inherent in a piece of proprietary enterprise-level software and accompanying proprietary network hardware. The plaintiff's attorneys have proposed an expert witness who has run IT businesses since the 1980s, has developed and written software, has worked as a certified network engineer, and currently manages a staff of IT professionals.

The defense's argument to forbid the witness is that he's never qualified to be an expert witness in court before.

The defense's “expert witness” is a fellow who professionally serves as an IT expert witness. His primary living is made from selling insurance. He also salvages hardware, including IT hardware. But he's been “qualified” by courts previously as an IT expert witness, and thus, is automatically accepted as such.

Go figure.

sitetest

18
posted on 12/09/2013 5:57:07 AM PST
by sitetest
(If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)

She’s a representative sample of what happens when you incentivize incorrectly. The entire criminal justice system needs a revamp. End sovereign immunity, end civil forfeiture and recalibrate the “war” on drugs if you want to return to Constitutional liberties.

Most of this is a direct result of the ‘war on drugs’. I lay these perversions of our legal system (hasn’t been a ‘justice’ system for decades) directly at the feet of the drug warriors. More destruction of our republic has come from them, than just about anything else in the last 70 years.

The war on drugs is certainly a problem and a big one, but I think you have to look at how the FBI has taken on crime in general from the mob to gangs. The mob and gangs both exist because of government made law. Neither can flourish or survive without supporting government intervention.

In Chicago, Aldermen depend on gangs to get elected and then thwart efforts to eliminate gangs. Gangs are populated by talented kids from families ruined by government schools and welfare, topped off with restrictive zoning, licensing, permitting and tax laws making outlaw the best option. It has to stop and I hope the pension crisis will bring these bureaucrats to their knees.

I am thoroughly convinced that the majority of poverty is a direct result of government intervention. Case after case prove this, yet it feels good to intervene and so we do.

The war on drugs is certainly a problem and a big one, but I think you have to look at how the FBI has taken on crime in general from the mob to gangs. The mob and gangs both exist because of government made law. Neither can flourish or survive without supporting government intervention.

In Chicago, Aldermen depend on gangs to get elected and then thwart efforts to eliminate gangs. Gangs are populated by talented kids from families ruined by government schools and welfare, topped off with restrictive zoning, licensing, permitting and tax laws making outlaw the best option. It has to stop and I hope the pension crisis will bring these bureaucrats to their knees.

I am thoroughly convinced that the majority of poverty is a direct result of government intervention. Case after case prove this, yet it feels good to intervene and so we do.

Absolutely. The government manufactures crime and criminals to further its own purposes.

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